Between the Government and the Workers: Soviet Trade Unions During the NEP Period

Abstract

The paper examines how the Soviet trade unions developed under the NEP conditions. The analysis of party and trade union documents of bodies reveals the process of transformation of trade unions from an organization created to protect the interests of an employee into part and parcel of the party and state apparatus of the USSR. It is concluded that the trade unions as a social institution operated under permanent political control and were subject to direct intervention by the ruling Bolshevik party. By the end of the period under study, the subordinate position of the trade unions in relation to the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state was fully consolidated. That was an important step towards a mobilisation economy.